


Brightest

by Righ (Venenum)



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: F/M, bending isnt everything, everyone wanted to see asami as a firebender so here you go, why do i write these things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-28
Updated: 2012-06-28
Packaged: 2017-11-08 19:02:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/446458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Venenum/pseuds/Righ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Asami becomes a firebender, but it isn't to be. Her relationship with Mako, however, is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brightest

The first sign something is wrong is the light, blinding and bright as it illuminates Asami’s hands in towers of flame. The room falls into slow motion as he watches Tenzin dragging Korra away, the Avatar State having frozen her in place with an unrelenting grip. The next thing that hits him is the screaming, terrified like he’s never heard before as it pierces the demure peace of Air Temple Island.

Long dragons of flame wreathe around his girlfriend as she rises and throws her hands up and it’s the sight of Asami’s stricken white face that jolts him into action.

“Bolin!” he yells over the hysteria, his brother rushing forward to grab hold of her waist. Mako snatches her hands and extinguishes the fires with his own bending, controlling the heartbeats in his palms until they sputter and go out. By then, Asami has fainted and refuses to wake up.  


“What in the name of the spirits did you think you were doing?” thunders Tenzin, a sunset of a man in yellows and reds storming back into the room minus one Avatar who can also only have passed out after such an ordeal. “I had Korra ask me if Asami could bend before succumbing to exhaustion, what’s the meaning of this?”

“She can,” Mako says, pale and soaked in sweat, hardly believing his own ears. “Asami’s a firebender now.”

***

The dressing-down that Tenzin and Lin give Team Avatar is lengthy and by no means light, but Mako’s gaze is drawn inexorably to Asami throughout the whole thing. She sits primly, scorched hands bandaged, and looks entirely unrepentant to contrast Korra’s guilty slouch.

An hour later in his room, she’s asking him to probend down on the beach.

“Just come with me,” she urges him when he pulls a reluctant face, squeezing him in a hug. Kisses peck from one side of his mouth to another to sway his decision (admittedly doing a good job of it). “I’m so warm, Mako, is this how you've always lived? There’s a burning inside, right in my gut. I feel so alive. So _bright_.”

“Tenzin said we should wait for him to call in an expert, what Korra did to you might be a fluke –“

“It was amazing! Just think how many more non-benders she’ll be able to unlock the potential of.”

“You know that’s not going to happen,” he sighs, wanting it for her but able to see the middle-ground. “If people find out this is possible, then everyone will demand it as if it’s their right and what'll happen to Korra? She can’t spend her life making benders each time a child can’t do it. It’s not fair to her.”

He’s relieved when she ducks into the crook of his neck for comfort, tall enough that she hunches in a little as his arms go around her. Mako runs his hands all over her back and up into lusciously thick black hair, nuzzling affectionately along a temple, able to feel the graze of bandages through the cotton of his vest as she parodies the caresses.

“I feel so much closer to you now,” Asami says contentedly, and he follows the brush of injured fingertips along his jaw that guide him into a slow kiss.

***

It comes so naturally to her that the on-looking guards of the White Lotus ask him why it took so long for her to develop such latent abilities. The cover story is flimsy but believable, and no one wants more than the absolute fraction involved to learn that Korra is now able to lock and unlock bending in people on a whim.

He doesn’t interrupt Asami’s routines, enjoying the free show.

She moves with serpentine grace and power-packed punches, guided by muscle-memory developed when she was a little girl at her father’s behest. Asami has always known how to take care of herself, but now she’s something else. Deadly almost, fond of throwing out flamethrowers in abandon just to see the air sway and burn. Flames are ever ready around her fists and in his mind’s eye they replace the Equalist glove she used to keep around.

“Teach me how to generate lightning,” she demands, chin high and hair free and absolutely perfect. “I want to do everything.”

It’s ten hours before she manages to force out the first spark, past midnight and too late to be yelling excitedly with the Airbender children in bed, but neither of them can contain their excitement.

***

She learns how to breathe fire and heats their kisses with flames when they make love, nails raking and thighs sliding over his body, and he comes with shudder that feels like it might have erupted from somewhere vital inside, tightening his lungs. Everywhere her slick hands roam is hot, dark hair sticks to them in stringy sweaty clumps and perspiration beads on her collar-bone, a stripe of his tongue licking up the tang of salt on a gasp. Buried within her body, Mako swears he can feel those fires swallowing him whole.

Asami rolls him onto his back and rides him to hardness once again until he is completely convinced.

***

The day her bending disappears is the first time he watches her unravel to the core, screaming in frustration as rain beats down on the courtyard in sheeting gusts. She's soaked through, as is he, and her hair is as limp and sodden as her spirit. There are tear-tracks streaking her blotchy cheeks along with smudged make-up; he would have been able to tell the difference even if she wasn't wearing any.

“You don't understand, Mako!” she yells, going through the motions to generate lightning so vigorously that she trips and falls. Her hands slap him away as she stumbles to her feet. “No – No, don't _touch_ me!”

“Tenzin said this might happen,” he says, raising his voice over the howling of the wind. Her sobs. “You knew there was a possibility that -”

“No!” she screeches when he puts his arms around her, turning his head away from the fists slamming into his ribs and sides with subsequent grunts. There's a trained professional in Asami, not an athlete with the endurance of Korra or a constant source of power like Bolin, but each fist always connects exactly where it means to. A melee combat fighter that Mako clutches tightly as her miserable weight drags them to their knees. “ _Please_ ...”

“I love you so much, this doesn't change that.”

“This isn't about _us_ , Mako! I – I was complete. You don't understand because you've always been a firebender, the freedom that comes with it. That was mine. It _is_ mine and I want it back.”

“Asami,” he snaps, grasping her arms to scowl at her incredulously. “This is insane. Since when have you needed anything but your own confidence to feel whole? You are _so_ amazing.”

“You don't get it ...”

“I do.” His throat constricts. Her gaze is taken to the ocean, a longing in her eyes that terrifies him instinctively though she doesn't say a word. “And I know how to fix this.”

***

The moment she touches him, he feels a lightness in his limbs as though his blood is rising to the surface and a warmth is constricting the marrow in his bones. Frozen in place, his cheek hits the floor as he slumps with a thud, gasping for air. Korra is weeping unrepentantly overhead, clinging to Bolin who also can't help but muffle his tears into her shoulder.

“Mako?”

Blinking, he rolls on his back and stares up at the blurry rendition of Asami's face, a cool touch of silky fingers refocusing his mind. With an ache that feels like a polarbear-dog winded him, he pushes up on a hand and tentatively throws forward a blast … of _nothing_. Not a single wisp of smoke. Mako wants to vomit, displaced and needing to find a new centre of gravity as arms tightly cinch around his neck, and he holds onto Asami tightly with an iron-fisted grip in her fine clothes.

“Mako, _why_? Your bending ... _Spirits_ , I can't believe you did this to yourself!”

“D-Did what?” he asks, burying a hand in her hair and encouraging Asami to look at him.

“You should have told me you were going through with this ...”

“Am I alive?”

“What? Yes -”

“And do you still love me?”

“Why are you even _asking_ -”

“I told you,” he murmurs dazedly, returning her salty kisses as she berates him, insists he's stupid, _so stupid, why did you do that?_ “I love you. I haven't lost anything important, Asami, not a single thing.”

***

The alarm clock goes off at eight o'clock but it's nowhere near as loud as the hollering going on in the back-yard.

“Daddy,” a pint-size version of Asami keens, his own golden eyes staring up at him widely from beneath a waterfall of inky black locks. “Daddy, wake up, wake up!”

“Mmrgh,” Mako grunts, raising his head and rolling over, the movement taken as an open invitation for his daughter to clamber up and straddle his stomach. “What is it, sweetie?” he yawns, tickling behind Lin's ear.

“Bohai keepth thaying my earthbending ith rubbish,” she sniffles, rubbing already reddened eyes.

“Honey, you know you're not supposed to bend with your brother unless Mummy or Daddy is around to supervise, you remember what happened to the roof.”

“I wathn't! He did it and tho I did it and then we both did, it'th _hith_ fault. He made a _hugely-big_ flame on the thwing tho I put a bunch of rockth on it.” A button-nose wrinkles. “We need a new one.”

“Flawless logic,” Mako dryly agrees, dragging her down in between him and Asami as his wife lifts her attention, a slender hand roaming through unkempt waves as she scratches her head.

“Morning, beautiful,” she coos, and Lin wiggles between her parents. Mako wraps an arm around Asami's waist and kisses her over their giggling daughter's crown.

“You should say Good Morning to our baby, too.”

“Very funny,” Asami grumbles, smiling as noses nuzzle.

The boom of what can only be a swing exploding rocks the house and seconds later, a gangly seven-year-old boy skids past the door of his parent's bedroom, peeking around the side. Green eyed and fluffy-haired, Bohai beams his uncle's grin innocently where he stands panting.

“I wasn't practicing the Fire-Butt Blaster that Master Meelo taught me, I swear on the Wolfbats!”

“You weren't, huh?” An _oof_ leaves Mako as Bohai launches himself howling like his probending heroes at the bed, crawling up to flop spread-eagled on his back for Asami to ruffle his hair. “So, is your Auntie Korra visiting or did we all just go deaf for no reason?”

“Bohai'th in trouble,” lisps Lin over her new front teeth, sing-song.

“I am not!” Bohai shoots back, sticking out his chin. “Mummy, Lin earthbended the neighbour's fence.”

“That wath a' _accthident_! Bohai hath a _girlfriend_ , he liketh cous'thin Senra.”

“You said you wouldn't tell, you promised!”

The bed bounces madly as the siblings swat and chase each other over the end. Carefully gathering Asami into his arms, Mako blithely ignores the sound of earth splitting at the back of a house and triumphant girlish laughter, a hand passing over the swollen belly that carries his youngest.

“You know,” says Asami wistfully, lacing their fingers together, “I think this one feels like a non-bender to me. Yep, definitely not a rug-rat.”

“Like that would make a difference,” Mako smiles, taking his time kissing her before the day commences and Operation Breakfast turns into a fiasco as usual. “They're all _your_ children.”

Asami hums.

"Do you think it's going to be hot today? We should take them to play with their cousins, I said I'd visit Korra so we could both moan how much our feet are hurting carrying Fire-Ferret babies."

"Yeah," Mako says into a happy kiss, contentment washing over him with the sunshine through the window. "It's going to be brighter than ever."


End file.
